Latin American Studies Collections

Padura at UC Berkeley

Posted on November 2, 2018November 2, 2018 by Liladhar

I had posted that Cuban luminary author Leonardo Padura Fuentes will be at UC Berkeley on October 26th. I was fortunate to attend this event. Below is one of the photos that I took during the event using my cell phone.

The author’s introduction was provided as follows, “Leonardo Padura, Cuba’s most distinguished living author, winner of numerous international literary prizes, including the Asturias Prize (called Spain’s “Literary Nobel Prize”), and author of several novels and essays, including the detective series The Four Seasons of Havana, which has also been adapted as a Netflix series, will read from his work and be interviewed on-stage on Friday, October 26 at 5pm in the Townsend Center’s Geballe Room at UC Berkeley. ”

New books from Paraguay @Doe Library!

Posted on November 1, 2018November 6, 2018 by Liladhar

The books from Paraguay and their acquisition represents an unique challenge to the Latin American Studies selector due to several factors. The select vendors who supply the books from the region as well as the limited number of academic level books that get published in Paraguay are some of those factors. Despite these limitations, at UC Berkeley’s Doe Library, we collect books from all parts of South America. I am glad to share with you some limited photos of these new book purchases at the library. As far as the selection tools are concerned, the online presence of La Cámara del Libro de Asunción Paraguay (CLAP) serves to be of limited use. However, there is a list of local bookshops and publishers that can be of great use to the selectors. Please click on the photo below to get access to the full album.

Select new books from Costa Rica @ Doe Library, October 2018

Posted on October 29, 2018October 12, 2018 by Liladhar

Here are some of the new books from Costa Rica. Please click on the icon below to get access to the full album. Thank you. Among these books, there is an interesting book that is entitled, “La cofradía cimarrona. El cantante cimarrón by Delia McDonald. Its review can be read here.

(JSTOR)— 400 titles published by El Colegio de México are now Open Access!

Posted on October 25, 2018October 25, 2018 by Liladhar

CELEBRATING OPEN ACCESS WEEK
JSTOR is delighted to announce that more than 400 titles published by El Colegio de México are now available on an Open Access basis to researchers worldwide, thanks to the support of the Mellon Foundation. This project will expand to include a total of 600 titles by the end of this year.

El Colegio de México (Colmex) is one of the most important academic research centers in Latin America, and it publishes key titles across the humanities and social sciences. However, many of its classic books were previously out of print and unavailable to researchers. This project not only makes the books accessible to a global audience but ensures their availability for decades to come.

View the Colmex titles

https://youtu.be/bos3Xdt_oGI

The Colmex titles are just one part of JSTOR’s Open Access ebook initiative. Jstor now hosts nearly 4,000 OA titles that are freely available for anyone to use. These titles reflect Jstor’s high standards for quality content and are being preserved in Portico.

Libraries are encouraged to make the Open Access ebook collection discoverable to their patrons using our free OCLC MARC records or by activating the collection in their discovery service. Once the libraries set this up, they will automatically receive updates as new titles are added to the Open Access collection.

Jstor has also recently updated our policy for issuing credits for Open Access books. View all of our Open Access info for libraries.

Leonardo Padura: the luminary Cuban writer at UC Berkeley!

Posted on October 22, 2018October 22, 2018 by Liladhar

Padura at UNAM about the barrio speaking about where he grew up and about his life.

For his books in our catalog, please see below:

[Database Trial] Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations, 1959-, Part 2: Writers

Posted on October 17, 2018October 17, 2018 by Liladhar

The UC Berkeley Library had purchased the part 1 of Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations from Brill in 2017. Now, we are having a trial of part 2 of the same database- Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations, 1959 that deals with the writers. The trial will go through November 15th, 2018.

The trial can be accessed here: https://primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/cuban-culture-and-cultural-relations-part-2

More than 63,800 digital files

Records on 1,046 writers and artists
Full-text search functionality
Including MARC21 catalog records

Background and Resource Description

Founded in Havana in 1959, only a few months after the Revolution, Casa de las Américas quickly developed into one of the most prestigious cultural centers in Latin America and the Caribbean. To a large extent its success and survival are the result of its capacity to establish a remarkable intellectual network around a common vision. When during the early years of the Revolution many foreign embassies closed their doors, Casa de las Américas offered a space for progressive minds to exchange information and discuss new ideas. Here, writers and artists from Latin America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world met and gave lectures, organized concerts and exhibitions, staged theater shows, conducted research, and found a place to publish their writings. The record of their activities, which continue to this day, are preserved in Casa de las Américas’ archive, presented here in digital format for the first time.

The Vertical Archive

Casa de las Américas is home to a large library specializing in Latin American and Caribbean humanities and social sciences. Throughout its almost six decades of existence, this library has amassed and preserved an unparalleled archival collection known as “the Vertical Archive.” Organized in five parts, the present part, Writers, offers a unique insight into the activities of the more than a thousand writers and artists who visited La Casa. The archive consists of unpublished manuscripts, letters as well as authorial notes and redactions.

Writers

Famous writers from the twentieth century form the core of the collection. Here one encounters such luminaries as Jorge Amado, Mario Benedetti, Roberto Bolaño, María Luisa Bombal, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, Julio Cortázar, Roque Dalton and Gabriel García Márquez, to name but a few. Some of the leading writers from the nineteenth century are also represented, including José Martí and the pioneer Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis. These world-renowned figures are accompanied by hundreds of their arguably less illustrious peers, who are nevertheless equally essential to illustrate the cultural climate and history of the era.

Artists

In addition to writers, the archive includes files on painters, such as Roberto Matta and David Alfaro Siqueiros, filmmakers, such as Santiago Álvarez and Glauber Rocha, and musicians, such as Chilean singer-songwriter and political activist Víctor Jara.

Files means simply documentation: it could be an article from a local newspaper or magazine or a cable. The Casa de las Américas collected all sorts of documents over the past 60 years. Sometimes material they produced themselves, but also a lot of press clippings that were sent to them by other institutions across Latin America and the Caribbean. They did this partly to keep the Casa informed about how the Revolution and its culture was perceived abroad. This was especially important because a host of countries cut diplomatic ties with Cuba, turning the Casa de las Américas effectively in some sort of embassy.

New books from Mexico at Doe Library

Posted on October 15, 2018October 12, 2018 by Liladhar

I apologize for the quality of the photos of this batch of the new titles from Mexico. The camera that I had for some years now has finally broken down. Thus I had to use my phone camera. Despite the breaking down of the camera, I believe that this batch of select photos of Mexican books will provide you with some insight on our streamlined book collection from Mexico. Enjoy! Please click on the icon below to gain access to the full album. There is a five-volume set on the history of Yucatan that is of interest to our historians and students alike.

Escritura, Trama Y Deseo with Diamela Eltit

Posted on October 11, 2018October 12, 2018 by Liladhar

Escritura, Trama Y Deseo (Writing, Plot And Desire)
Diamela Eltit in conversation with Natalia Brizuela and Francine Masiello
Thursday, October 11, 2018
5:30-7:30pm
Geballe Room, Townsend Center for the Humanities

Please note: this event will be held in Spanish. Simultaneous English translation will be provided for those who need it.

Co-sponsored by the Arts Research Center and the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and the Center for Latin American Studies

Una aproximación a las vueltas y revueltas del imaginario literario y su conexión con el universo social. (An approach to the revolutions and revolts of the literary imaginary and its connection with the social universe.)

Diamela Eltit is one of Latin America’s most daring writers and is highly regarded for her avant-garde initiatives in the world of letters. Eltit began her engagement with literature in her native Chile during the years of the Pinochet dictatorship when she participated in the collective CADA, staging art actions against the dictatorship, and published her first novels, Lumpérica (1983) and Por la patria (1986), to universal acclaim. Since then she has published, among others, El Cuarto Mundo (1988), El padre mío (1989), Vaca sagrada (1991), Los vigilantes (1994), Los trabajadores de la muerte (1998), Mano de obra (2002), Jamás el fuego nunca (2007), and Impuesto a la carne (2010). She has been honored repeatedly by international organizations, among them the Modern Language Association in the United States and Casa de las Americas in Havana, and has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fondo Nacional de Investigaciones, the Social Science Research Council, CONICYT, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Eltit has also held positions as writer-in-residence at Brown University, Washington University in St. Louis, Columbia University, UC/Berkeley the University of Virginia, Stanford University, and Johns Hopkins University. She is currently the Distinguished Global Professor of Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU.

ARC’s 2018-19 program is a collaboration between ARC Interim Director Natalia Brizuela (Film & Media and Spanish & Portuguese), Tarek Elhaik (Anthropology, UC Davis), Anneka Lenssen (History of Art), Leigh Raiford (African American Studies), and Poulomi Saha (English), supported by a generous grant from The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI).

The year’s investigations on art and critique from/in the Global South will take off with a Workshop in Mexico City (September 6-8), co-convened by Natalia Brizuela and Elena Tzelepis (University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece), organized through the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP) with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Mexico City workshop will take place at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) at the UNAM. More details on the Mexico City workshop can be found here.

New Latin American Studies Books at Doe Library.

Posted on October 5, 2018September 14, 2018 by Liladhar

I wanted to highlight some of our recent purchases of several noteworthy books at the Doe Library. I am trying to strike a balance between the budgetary constraints, the faculty needs and some thoughts on a future vision about the Latin American collections at the Doe Library. The future of the Caribbean and Latin American collections should operate on the principles of outreach to the scholars and efficiency building.

The first noteworthy acquisition is that of a very interesting limited edition book as highlighted below.

Cornelio Adrián César : impresor flamenco en México, 1597-1633

Author: Juan Pascoe; Taller Martín Pescador.; Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa.; John Carter Brown Library.Publisher: [Tacambaro, Mexico] : El Taller Martìn Pescador ; [Oaxaca] : Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa de Oaxaca y ; [Providence, R.I.] : The John Carter Brown Library, 2017.

Subjects: César, Cornelio Adrián, — approximately 1574-approximately 1633. ,Printers — Mexico — History.

The book is published by Juan Pascoe at his famous printing shop in Tacambaro, Mexico. This purchase compliments our sister library-Bancroft’s collections of Juan Pascoe items.

The other noteworthy acquisitions are those of the new books from Venezuela. The selected photographs can be seen here.

New books from Chile-September 2018 at Doe Library

Posted on September 30, 2018September 6, 2018 by Liladhar

At the Doe library, we continue to collect books from all regions of Latin America. We do not have geographic restrictions like our other counterpart libraries. Here is a new fresh batch of Chilean books that I would like to present you with. There are several important works that are dedicated to the history and Chilean literature. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. You can browse through the selected photos of these pictures by clicking on the icon below.